


Sundered

by unwindmyself



Series: curious shapes shift in the dark [16]
Category: True Blood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Exposition, F/F, Female Friendship, Fix-It, Gen, Vampire Family, agency and choices!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 21:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwindmyself/pseuds/unwindmyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're family so they deal with things like a family, but after Pam and Tara's brush with quasi-vigilante law enforcement, they're resigning themselves to having even more to deal with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sundered

**Author's Note:**

> Part four, "It Was Blue."

The moment the door swings open, Pam’s right on them.  “Where the _fuck_ have you been,” she shouts.

Eric pulls his phone from his pocket and waves it in her face.  “It’s been exactly two minutes and twenty-four seconds since we spoke,” he says in his patiently cautioning voice.  “We’re fast, but we’re not teleporters.”

“Wipe that smirk off your face,” Pam retorts, taking him by the arm and dragging him to the bar, where Tara’s laid out, still giving those quiet little moans.

“Oh my goodness,” Nora murmurs, a hand flying to her mouth as she regards the injured woman.

“What oh my goodness?” Jessica whispers, tugging Nora’s elbow.  “What’s goin’ on?”

“What does it look like?” Pam snaps.

“Stop that,” Tara slurs.  “S’not helping.”

Pam glares at Jessica (and Nora by extension, given that the redhead’s still clinging to her arm) but she obliges her progeny.  “Just do something,” she implores Eric.  They may fight, they may disagree, but at the end of the night, she still believes her Maker has it in him to do anything, really.

Nora more or less believes the same – she always has, it’s funny because even Godric was plenty fallible in her eyes sometimes but though Eric has always had his faults and she’s always known that, he’s also quite frankly her hero – and seeing that faith in her niece’s expression does something to her.

“First things first,” she says to him, all soft and resolute.  “We’ll need to get the bullet out of her.”

Eric nods, snapping out of the reverie he’d fallen into.  “Jessica,” he says.  “Go into my office and get my first aid kit.  It’s in the bottom desk drawer.”

Jessica raises an eyebrow.  She can’t imagine what sort of help Neosporin is gonna be, but she follows instructions and returns with the kit quickly.

“Good,” Eric mutters, opening the box so decisively the latch breaks.

Pam’s still got a hand in Tara’s, she’s whispering reassurances in her ear; unbidden, Nora moves to smooth Tara’s hair back soothingly.

“Take her ankles,” she directs Jessica, her voice far too calm, and though Jessica’s not sure why exactly, she makes to do so.

Apparently it’s procedure, though, and apparently this is a special vampire first aid kit, which makes more sense of course, but Jessica doesn’t feel too bad for not knowing since she’d never even been told there was such a thing.  (Maybe there’s not and it’s just something Eric put together for owning a bar or just for having, but who knows.)  The first thing Eric pulls from the kit is a pair of gloves; the next things are a pair of tweezers and a knife.

“Get to it,” Pam insists.

“I could have just used a broken bottle to dig it out of her, would you have preferred that?” Eric snaps, but his hands are steady as he cuts into the skin of Tara’s abdomen around the wound.

“Shit,” Tara hisses, body twisting, and Pam squeezes her hand even tighter, Nora combs fingers through her hair, Jessica presses down just slightly on her ankles to keep her still.

“I know it hurts, Tara,” Eric says patiently.  “I know and I’m sorry, but the sooner I get this out of you, the sooner you’ll feel better.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Tara mumbles, but she makes an effort to calm her body anyhow.

Eric smiles just slightly (he can see why Pam and Tara get on so well more and more) and moves in to search for the bullet, wincing a bit at the heat coming from the wound.  Every time Tara groans, one if not all of the other women respond with peaceful nonsense murmurs.

Soon, he locates it and reaches for the tweezers instead.  “Nora,” he says.  “There should be glasses behind the counter.”

With one last gentling sweep of her hand over Tara’s brow, Nora breaks away to grab one of the mentioned glasses.  It takes her a moment to find a clean one, but once she does she pops back up and holds it out to Eric.

He extracts the bullet, then drops it into the glass, frowning at it.  It’s the size of a normal bullet, silver of course, and most interestingly it’s emitting just a faint glow, smoking and hissing as it rolls around the bottom of the glass.

“Fuck,” Nora whispers.

With it gone, Tara’s wound heals up fast, the skin joining back together and the pained expression fading from her face.  Nora hops over the counter, pushes Eric aside, and apropos of nothing bends to examine her grandniece’s abdomen more closely.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Pam asks.

Nora rolls her eyes, straightening back up and brushing her hands down the front of her dress.  “I think you need to explain to us what happened,” she says instead, going to sit at one of the tables and folding her hands in her lap all primly.

Pam carefully lifts Tara from the counter and leads her to a different table, this one a booth for more optimal snuggling because damned if they aren’t gonna do that right now.  Pam holds Tara close with an arm round her shoulder, Tara leans against her gratefully; her sweater is still unzipped, though it’s basically ruined from the bullet.  Jessica sits at the bar, Eric just paces.

“We were just unloading after we got back from seein’ Sookie,” Pam begins.  “Oh, yeah, she gave us her extra TruBlood stash.  There’s crates in the office if y’all want any.”

Eric raises an eyebrow.  Well, strictly speaking it was _his_ TruBlood to begin with, leftovers from his temporary takeover of her house, so it makes sense that it’s back in his – their – possession.  He goes to fetch two bottles of the stuff – one for Pam and Tara to share and one for him and Nora and Jessica (well, Tara probably needs more than the rest of them right now, ordeals like that having a way of taking a lot out of you; in ideal circumstances he’d find a human to borrow but that’s not exactly an option, is it?) – and returns.

“Anyway, we got stopped by a couple idiot cops, they were harassin’ us, they tried to shoot me, Tara got in the way,” Pam continues, opening the bottle but immediately passing it to Tara.

“Where are the idiot cops now?” Nora asks, patiently as if she’s taking a deposition.

“Dead,” Pam says plainly.  “That’s the other thing.  There’s two corpses in the back.”

Eric and Nora both roll their eyes.  “Was that necessary?” Nora asks.

“Yes,” Pam retorts.  In her opinion, her aunt isn’t really the best person to judge what’s _necessary_ , so her irascibility is completely legitimate.  (Not that it whether it was or not would stop her.)  “You saw what that gun did to Tara, if they’d had a chance to shoot again…”

“Very well,” Nora says, sounding slightly beleaguered.  “Were they on foot?”

“It’s not like we had a lot of time to look around,” Tara chimes in.

Suppressing a sarcastic remark (after all, it’s not as if that remark was unfounded, she can admit that) Nora and Eric exchange pointed looks before Eric speeds outside. 

“What’s he doin’?” Jessica asks, mostly just to fill the silence even though she’s pretty sure she knows.

“I’m glad to report,” Eric announces upon reentering, tugging on his jacket to straighten it a bit after that dash round the block, “There’s an abandoned cop car parked at the corner.”  Another of those pointed looks between the siblings.

“Good,” Nora says.  “Pamela, would you mind fetching the corpses?”

Pam rolls her eyes, but it’s easier than trying to explain where exactly they’re stowed, so she goes to get them and returns quickly, throwing both bodies on one of the tables before returning to the booth Tara’s still not moved from.

“I broke their necks,” she says coolly.  “Least there’s less mess.”

“Considerate,” Eric declares in that way he’s got that’s equal parts charming and infuriating.

Nora springs up to examine the bodies, frowning.  At least her niece had the foresight to reholster the cop’s gun before she brought him inside.  She doesn’t say anything, but she waves Eric over; he’s still got those gloves on, so it makes sense for him to be the one to unload the cartridge of bullets and hold them up to look at.

“Oh, shit,” Nora says.

“Okay, one of y’all has got to explain,” Jessica interjects, sounding just slightly frustrated.

“Silver bullet, of course, but you see how they’re glowing here?” Nora says patiently, motioning the girl close as Eric plays show-and-tell.  “It’s UV light inside them.”

“Shit!” Jessica echoes.

“So that’s what was keeping Tara from healing,” Eric takes over.

“They said they had things like this,” Nora murmurs.  “I mean – they didn’t tell us exactly _what_ , of course, but they – it’s because…”

“ _Syster, nej_ ,” Eric whispers, setting the bullets on the table beside their deceased owners and placing a hand on Nora’s arm, right above that leather bracelet.  The message is clear: stop spiraling.

“What now?” Pam asks, and she sounds a little more like she cares than she has in nights past.

“It’s clear this government business is going to be even more of a problem than we thought,” Eric says.  “So the first thing to do is get rid of these –” Here, he motions to the bodies and Nora resists the urge to roll her eyes (not that she minds, and it was sort of her idea anyway, but she’s destroyed more vehicles in the last week than she has since cars were _invented_ , for goodness’ sake, it’s getting ridiculous) – “And after that, we relocate.”

“You don’t mean…” Pam begins, and off Eric’s nod, she continues, “You’re shitting me, we haven’t used that place in years.”

“It’s safer than Shreveport right now,” Eric says with a shrug.

**Author's Note:**

>  _syster, nej_ ; "sister, no"


End file.
